Welcome to the University of South Florida
Division of Vascular Surgery

The University of South Florida’s Division of Vascular Surgery, originally founded in 1981 by William Blackshear, assumed its modern form in the early 1990s with the arrival of Dennis Bandyk as Division Director. I had the honor of taking over this role in 2011, and since that time we have grown steadily and continued to spread our influence throughout the Tampa Bay region. As of summer 2014 our group includes ten surgeons practicing at five hospitals, and we expect continued growth throughout this decade.

Clinical

Our group is a leader in several areas, notably including complex aortic surgery (including fenestrated and snorkeled endovascular repair), management of infected grafts, pioneering work on the role of noninvasive laboratory examination, treatment of complex problems after AV access, and treatment of thoracic outlet syndrome. We have an extremely busy carotid stenting practice and focus as well on complex limb salvage. We currently practice at five hospitals, see patients at three locations, and are about to staff an AV access endovascular center. Our group perform over 2,000 cases yearly, and our residents’ case experience is among the highest in the nation.

Research

We have a very active research program, which includes a didactic teaching syllabus during each academic year on the process of academics. We are engaged in 10 clinical trials at this point, and can offer enrollment to patients with thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysms, claudication and limb threat, venous ulceration, thoracic outlet syndrome, and simulation and case specific preoperative rehearsal.

We are also active in the major vascular trial examining the benefit of autologous stem cell therapy for patients with non-reconstructable vascular disease.

We hope you will find this website useful, whether a patient, prospective trainee, friend, or otherwise interested in what we have to offer. Welcome to the division of vascular surgery!

Education

Perhaps our greatest strength is education. We have an unusually active training program. While we worked with non-accredited fellows throughout the 1980s, our formal fellowship started in 1990. We have graduated 23 fellows to date, who are engaged in both clinical and academic practice (with one Division Chief among our alumnae). We were one of the first five 0+5 programs, starting our first intern in 2006, and as of now have graduated two such trainees, both pursuing academic careers. We added a second 0+5 slot beginning July of 2013, which includes a full research year.

A very significant asset for us is the Center for Advanced Learning and Simulation (CAMLS), a 90,000 ft.² freestanding medical education and simulation facility in downtown Tampa created and owned fully by USF. This facility allows us to train our own students and trainees from all over the world in what is absolutely the finest such facility in the world, performing as much learning as possible before seeing real patients. We have a very high volume of both endovascular and open procedures and faculty uniformly interested in education and learners alike, and for all of these reasons we consider ourselves to be one of the premier vascular surgical educational programs worldwide.

We hope you will find this website useful, whether a patient, prospective trainee, friend, or otherwise interested in what we have to offer.